Lake Brownwood man is ultimate survivor

Tumbleweed Smith

Published 10:31 am, Thursday, August 16, 2012

Cotton Dillard of Lake Brownwood has survived 45 rattlesnake bites, six bouts with cancer (once he was given three months to live), numerous motorcycle crashes and several falls from oil derricks. He is one tough hombre who is lucky to be alive. Once during a rattlesnake sacking contest a snake stuck its fangs under Dillard's thumbnail. Dillard knocked the snake away with such force that the fangs remained under his thumbnail. Dillard grabbed the fangs with his teeth and spat them out. Another time a snake left its fangs in his arm. I imagine only a handful of people have had fangs stuck in them and it happened to Dillard twice.

Dillard didn't start fooling around with rattlesnakes until he was 38 years old. That's when he decided to enter rattlesnake sacking competitions. In the first one he entered he set a new world record. He went on to set six more. At one event he sacked five rattlesnakes in three seconds. During the peak of his competing days, he would imagine the snakes to be twigs and he picked them up without fear. In rattlesnake sacking events, contestants have to put 10 snakes in a tow sack. They are in an enclosed area about 10 square feet. Dillard has been a familiar figure at rattlesnake events all over Texas. He's 77 years old now and hasn't entered any contests lately. But he's always thinking about coming out of retirement. These days he doesn't even have any snakes around his house. "Just a foot-long centipede," he said.

Rattlesnakes have bitten him on his lip and on his nose. The worst bite he had was at his daughter's house when he was trying to get a snake out of a bucket. "I spent 21 days in intensive care," said Dillard, "then 16 days in the hospital and about two and a half months at my daughter's house recuperating."

He has held 51 snakes in his hands at one time. He used to put them inside his shirt.At one point in his career he was a rodeo clown. He rode a motorcycle in the arena and crashed it while going 50 miles an hour. "I had a dozen rattlers in a bread box on the back of the motorcycle. When it crashed, the snakes would come out. I'd clown around and make like I couldn't find them all. Cowboys climbed the walls."

He did the Kung Fu Death Walk in which he walked barefooted through a group of rattlesnakes. "I'd just kick them to one side. Sometimes I'd pick one up with my toes and throw it over."

He has done the kiss of death with a rattlesnake. "Get it to coil on a table, then reach down and kiss it on the back of its head. I did that 21 times and never got bit."

Cotton started riding Brahma bulls when he was 9 years old. "When I was 8, I had scarlet fever. Two doctors pronounced me dead and laid me out for three hours. No vital signs at all. One of them told my mother to take me to the funeral home. She seemed to know that I wasn't dead. Next morning I got up and went to school."